His face softened, and he stepped closer. Around us, the music was picking up, faster, people whooping it up. “Why didn’t you tell me? About the shooting? About Ethan?”
Ethan. It was the last name I wanted to hear. It didn’t belong in this place, at this moment. All around me people were happy, flushed and in motion, the way the world had been on that crisp fall morning not even a year ago. How stupid I was to think Ambrose and I could somehow be happy, too, after such a bumpy, uneven beginning. To really be happy, you needed epic, like Ethan, and we weren’t that. Not even close.
“Jilly told you?” I said, my voice sounding light, like it was rising away from me.
“She was looking out for you,” he said. “She’s protective. I get it. What you went through . . .”
“Don’t pity me,” I said quickly, stepping back. “Don’t do that. I don’t need it.”
“I’m not,” he replied, moving closer to close the gap between us. “I just feel like an idiot, all that stuff I said about breakups and you being cynical. You must have felt—”
“I don’t feel anything,” I said, cutting him off. “It’s fine.”
“Hey.” He reached out for my arm, but I shook him off, the response reflexive, immediate. “Look. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I didn’t know. And if I said stupid things. I’m just . . . sorry.”
The music was changing now, the current song winding down, another, slower one coming in behind it. A perfect transition, and how common is that? I hated that I noticed.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, stepping back farther. “And I should go, actually. I told Ben I’d meet him.”
He blinked at me. “You did?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t know I’d won the bet, yet. And I kind of like this dating thing. I can see why you’re so into it.”
“I don’t want to do it anymore, though,” he said immediately. “And I don’t care about the bet. You’re more than that. You always have been. That was just a way to win you.”
I wished the music would stop. I wished everything would stop. But wishes don’t mean anything. I’d been right about that all along.
“You don’t want me,” I told him. “Nothing will ever be as good as what I had. I’ll never be what I was.”
“Louna.” He tried to reach for my hand; again, I pulled away. “Don’t say that.”
“I have to go,” I said, my voice breaking. “I have somewhere to be.”
He looked at me for a second, and I wondered about all the other ways this might have gone, possibilities spinning out into the future. Not that it mattered.
“Fine. Go,” he said. “But know this. I meant what I said to Jilly. How I feel about you. Nothing’s changed for me.”
That must be nice, I thought. Me, I could never count on anything without it shifting shape right before my eyes.
Somehow, I was moving off the edge of the dance floor, across that line. Then I went farther, over the grass, through the gate, and out to my car. I’d always wondered about the people who leave weddings early, the impetus for not seeing the whole thing through to the end. Everyone has their reasons, as unique and varied as faces and thumbprints. You could speculate all you want and still never get close. But I felt sure that as I departed, alone, no one was watching me.
CHAPTER
24
THIS WAS better. Of course it was.
“Are you going to finish that?” Ben asked, nodding at the last of the doughnut on my plate. This was a running joke, testament both to his bottomless appetite and the fact we always ended up eating together. Almost three weeks of dating, and these things happen. It was all normal, exactly how it was supposed to go.
“Go ahead,” I said, pushing it over to him.
He grinned, then picked it up, taking a bite. “The day you deny me your leftovers, I’ll know we’re finished.”
“That’s how you’ll know?” I asked. “You’ll miss every other sign?”
“Food is my language,” he explained, sipping his iced coffee. “That’s the way it works with us stubborn types. We miss other, normal cues.”
Another inside thing between us: how we referred to his tenaciousness in asking me, and actually getting me, to go out with him. Already, we had A Story, our own folklore: that semester of Western Civ, just friends, followed by the Lin wedding and then multiple attempts to get together, all thwarted by his schedule or mine. Finally, he saw me driving home one night, pulled a U-turn, and followed me to the next intersection, where he texted me an invite for a slice of pizza. I went, we ate, then kissed, and the rest was . . . well, this.
It was nice, the kind of story you wanted to tell, but I couldn’t help but recognize the tiny cracks in our origin tale’s foundation that only I could see. Like how on That Night I’d been coming from Maya and Roger’s wedding, still reeling from everything Ambrose had said to me. The fact that when I got Ben’s text at that light, I was typing back no before I realized he was right behind me. Small details, I knew, not really part of the outcome. And that was what mattered, anyway, the fact that we’d ended up together, over two slices, everything unfolding in a normal way. No instant dislike, dragging across parking lots, stealing of dogs and other annoying behavior, not a single weird bet or secret left unrevealed too long. If our relationship was a wedding, it would have been proceeding Just Fine, with no surprises or real problems. Unlike me and Ambrose and whatever we might have been, most assuredly a Disaster.
So, yes. This was good. And I didn’t have to worry about dating other people, because I’d won the bet. Though it didn’t feel like much of a victory. It didn’t feel like anything.
“You have foam on your nose,” Ben said now, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “It’s super cute. Let’s snap a pic.”
I made myself smile as I settled in against him, focusing my gaze on the tiny circle on his phone that was the camera. Ben was big into documentation of us on his Ume.com page and other social media sites. The first few times I’d scrolled through his feed and seen so much of my own face it had been alarming, although now I thought it was cute. Most of the time, anyway.
“Man,” he said, sliding his phone back in his pocket as I checked my watch out of habit, even though I wasn’t expected at work. “That woman sure can talk. Does she really think we need to hear about her lab results?”
I followed his gaze over my shoulder, where Phone Lady, at the next table, was indeed deep in conversation with someone about a recent “scan and blood draw, ordered by the doctor, and you know that’s never good.” I hadn’t even heard her until now, which said something about my level of attention. “She’s always does that,” I told him. “I think it’s like therapy for her, or something.”
“Sharing her most personal details with the coffee-buying public?”